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A day after the US gave tepid support for the establishment of Syrian safe zones to try to separate combatant forces and reduce the amount of fighting, they appear to have noticed that this might get in their way of their own attacks across the country, and are pledging to ignore the demilitarization of the zones.

Back when Turkey and the US were both super keen on the idea of safe zones, a big selling point was the imposition of no-fly zones over the areas, to keep the civilians within getting bombed. This was also a big obstacle, as the US wasn’t totally clear it could do this without declaring war on Russia. With Russia also on board now, that should’ve been easier. Instead, Russia announced that the safe zones, which went into effect overnight, are now officially closed to all warplanes, and US officials are livid at the idea, insisting they have no intention of respecting that. Largely this appears to be a case of the US just being deliberately difficult, as none of the safe zones are in areas US warplanes were operating in the first place. The reality, however, is that the zones are now being used in service of a ceasefire the US never really supported to begin with ,and with the US-backed rebels also objecting about the ceasefire getting in the way of their war, the US will be non-cooperative.

Judicial Watch today announced that U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson has ordered the U.S. Department of State to turn over to Judicial Watch “eight identical paragraphs” of previously redact material in two September 13, 2012, Hillary Clinton emails regarding phone calls made by President Barack Obama to Egyptian and Libyan leaders immediately following the terrorist attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi.  Both emails had the subject line “Quick Summary of POTUS Calls to Presidents of Libya and Egypt” and were among the emails stored on Clinton’s unofficial email server.  Judge Jackson reviewed the documents directly and rejected the government’s contention that the records had been properly withheld under the FOIA B(5) “deliberative process” exemption. Judge Jackson ruled:  “the two records, even if just barely predecisional, are not deliberative. [The State Department] has pointed to very little to support its characterization of these two records as deliberative, and the Court’s in camera review of the documents reveals that they do not fall within that category.” The full emails may reveal what former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Obama knew about the September 11, 2012, terror attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi.

The United States is not going to launch a preemptive attack on North Korea.  The risks far outweigh the rewards and, besides, the US has no intention of getting bogged down in a conflict that doesn’t advance its geopolitical objectives. The saber-rattling is just an attempt to divert attention from the Syria-Jordan border where the US and Jordan are massing troops and equipment for an invasion of Syria. That’s what’s really going on. The Korean fiasco is a smokescreen.

In a deal that will allow one broadcasting company to reach 72 percent of U.S. households through ownership of local news stations, it was reported this week that Sinclair Broadcast Group is buying Tribune Media for nearly $4 billion. Such a move wouldn’t have been possible a few weeks back, but Donald Trump’s new Federal Trade Commission (FCC) chairman, Ajit Pai, just began implementing sweeping changes to previously established media ownership rules. Bloomberg explains:

“A Sinclair-Tribune merger was made easier last month when the FCC restored a rule that allows TV station groups to count just half of their coverage area for Ultra High-Frequency stations to comply with a 39 percent nationwide cap set by Congress.

“So we’re seeing a concentration of power on the broadcast side at the same time they are building up these powerful new gatekeepers, really doing the bidding of the most powerful companies and just paving the way for them to do whatever they want.” Using Sinclair as an example, Aaron goes on to talk about how broadcasting giants are able to push the content they want across multiple platforms simultaneously: “So they both like to try to buy up multiple stations in the same market, have one newscast going on multiple channels, as well as doing as much as they can from Sinclair headquarters in terms of pushing content out to their whole network.” Calling Ajit Pai’s moves at the FCC “scandalous,” Aaron highlights the complexity of modern media and says that now — more than ever — we need an aware, conscious populace: “So, at a time where we need more local news, more competition, more choices, better-informed communities, what we’re getting is the same cookie-cutter content coast to coast.”

One of the most bizarre aspects of the all-consuming Russia frenzy is the Democrats’ fixation on changes to the RNC platform concerning U.S. arming of Ukraine. The controversy began in July when the Washington Post reported that “the Trump campaign worked behind the scenes last week to make sure the new Republican platform won’t call for giving weapons to Ukraine to fight Russian and rebel forces.” Ever since then, Democrats have used this language change as evidence that Trump and his key advisers have sinister connections to Russians and corruptly do their bidding at the expense of American interests. Democratic Senator Ben Cardin, the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, spoke for many in his party when he lambasted the RNC change in a July letter to the New York Times, castigating it as “dangerous thinking” that shows Trump is controlled, or at least manipulated, by the Kremlin. Democrats resurrected this line of attack this weekend when Trump advisers acknowledged that campaign officials were behind the platform change. This attempt to equate Trump’s opposition to arming Ukraine with some sort of treasonous allegiance to Putin masks a rather critical fact: namely, that the refusal to arm Ukraine with lethal weapons was one of Barack Obama’s most steadfastly held policies. The original Post article that reported the RNC platform change noted this explicitly:

South Korea’s Constitutional Court, on Friday, upheld the motion to impeach president Park Geun-hye. Acting Chief Justice Lee Jung-Mi read the ruling on the impeachment in a nationwide televised broadcast saying the Court’s decision by the eight justices was unanimous.

outh Korean law stipulated that the ruling has immediate effect – which means Park Geun-hye has been impeached and ousted from the presidency with immediate effect. She will be required to leave the presidential residence  – the Blue House – as soon as possible. A presidential election will be held in 60 days.

Since the December 9 adoption of the impeachment bill in the National Assembly, a total of 20 hearings had been held in the court. It took 92 days before the court’s final decision. Park will now possibly be subject to indictment and detention by prosecutors as she lost her presidential immunity following the court’s ruling. Prosecutors have identified Park as an accomplice of her longtime confidante Choi Soon-sil, who is at the center of a corruption scandal that led to Park’s impeachment for multiple charges including bribery, abuse of privileged information and nepotism. Having been impeached, Park will be stripped of most of the privileges granted to former presidents, including a monthly pension worth 12 million won or 10,400 U.S. dollars –  to 13 million won per month, one paid chauffeur and three paid secretaries. Free medicine and costs for a personal office will not be given to the impeached leader either. Moreover, the period during which she will have a special presidential security detail will be reduced from ten to five years.

Has the U.S.’s anti-terrorism program worked? Nope. In fact, terrorism has dramatically increased since the war began. A Dec. 15 breakdown by CBS’ Ben Swann showed that deaths from terrorism in the Middle East increased by 4,500 percent between 2002 and 2014. If the goal of the War on Terror is to reduce terrorism, it is an abysmal failure. Whoops.

On the heels of the explosive release of Wikileaks’ “largest ever publication of confidential documents” originating from the CIA, Wikileaks editor Julian Assange recently revealed startling information regarding the intelligence community’s plans to impeach President Donald Trump and replace him with Mike Pence, his vice president. Assange, tweeting early Tuesday morning, claimed that two intelligence officials close to Vice President Mike Pence “stated privately this month that they are planning on a Pence takeover.” However, as Assange noted, they did not say if Pence was aware of the plan or if he had agreed to it. Perhaps more surprising was the revelation that the push for a “Pence takeover” goes beyond the intelligence community. Another tweet from Assange asserted that Hillary Clinton “stated privately this month that she is quietly pushing for a Pence takeover” as “Pence is predictable hence defeatable.”

U.S. government researchers recently found that robots are likely to replace almost 47 percent of all U.S. jobs by 2036. Another recent study by researchers from the World Economic Forum found that robots will claim five million U.S. jobs – most of them “routine white-collar office” jobs – as soon as 2020, just three years from now. In addition, the U.S. government is set to introduce robotic soldiers to its military within the next few years, prompting experts to suggest that the U.S. armed forces will have more robots than human soldiers as soon as 2025.

It's bleak out there for Democrats and progressives, yet the future of the GOP may be more precarious than it appears.According to a new analysis from the Pew Research Center, 23 percent of Republican voters ages 18-29 have switched parties since 2015, against just 9 percent of Democratic voters in the same age range. As many as half of Republicans 30 and under have abandoned the party at one point or another during that time.

link By Malia Zimmerman Published May 16, 2017 Fox News Facebook Twitter Comments Email Print Now Playing Rod Wheeler on his investigation into DNC staffer's murder The family of the Democratic National Committee staffer who was gunned down on July 10 on a Washington, D.C., blasted reports that he was a source of emails leaked to WikiLeaks. Rod Wheeler, a retired Washington homicide detective and Fox News contributor investigating the case on behalf of the Rich family, made the WikiLeaks claim, which was corroborated by a federal investigator who spoke to Fox News.

Wheeler made his comments on the possible Rich-Wikileaks connection in a story first reported Monday night by Fox 5 DC.  In an appearance on Fox News' "Hannity" Tuesday night, Wheeler said a "federal investigator that was involved on the inside of the case" saw Rich's computer and the case file. Wheeler told host Sean Hannity the investigator "came across [as] very credible. When you look at that, with the totality of everything else that I found in this case, it’s very consistent for a person with my experience to begin to think, 'Well, perhaps there were some email communication between Seth and Wikileaks.'"

But a spokesman for Rich's family on Tuesday said Wheeler was not authorized to speak for the family and called assertions Seth Rich sent emails to WikiLeaks "unsubstantiated." Brad Bauman said even if purported emails were to surface, it would not necessarily mean Rich had helped WikiLeaks.

“Professor Stephen Hawking thinks the human species will have to populate a new planet within 100 years if it is to survive. With climate change, overdue asteroid strikes, epidemics, and population growth, our own planet is increasingly precarious,” a BBC press statement announcing the documentary says.

Turkey’s parliament approved the deployment of troops to Qatar while neighboring Iran offered to provide food supplies to ward off food shortages caused by the row between Qatar, its Gulf-Arab neighbors as well as Egypt and imposed sanctions.

California Democrats on Friday kicked off their three-day convention with a "raucous start" in Sacramento, where a wave of single-payer advocates demanded the party work towards a system that makes healthcare a human right. The gathering comes amid growing momentum nationwide for a single-payer, or Medicare-for-All, healthcare system, and as the Republican's widely scorned American Healthcare Act (AHCA) is days away from receiving its potentially problematic Congressional Budget Office (CBO) assessment. In a evening rally and march that went from the capitol to the Sacramento Convention Center, a crowd of nurses and other healthcare activists urged support for SB562—the advancing Healthy California Act—which would create a universal health system for Californians, and could "send a message" and "be a catalyst for the nation."

Their message, however, was not warmly received by California Democratic Party chairman John Burton. In fact, he "had nothing but F-bombs and sarcasm for the protesters who disrupted the welcome reception of the California Democratic Convention Friday, calling for universal healthcare and chanting 'Hey hey, ho ho, corporate Dems have got to go,'" Bay Area News Group reported. Video captured and posted to Twitter by Politico reporter David Siders shows Burton telling them to "shut the fuck up or go outside."

We would like to draw attention to reports, which are received regularly, of “unidentified” aircraft that have been seen providing support to local ISIS militants in various parts of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (IRA). In particular, this month, according to Jowzjan Province authorities, unmarked aircraft were spotted air-dropping consignments of weapons and other supplies to ISIS groups in at least three northern provinces of Afghanistan (Jowzjan, Faryab and Sar-e Pol). A representative of the Province of Gazni council in southern Afghanistan spoke publicly about the presence of unmarked helicopters in areas controlled by terrorists in the Waghaz and Khogyani districts. It is noteworthy that even amidst an anti-Russia campaign in some Afghan and Western media that aim to accuse Russia of supporting the Taliban, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and US Defence Intelligence Agency Chief Vincent Stewart said they had no evidence to corroborate these allegations. This begs the logical question that has to be put to the above NATO and US officials: what do they know about the identity of these so-called unidentified aircraft flying over Afghanistan, a country where a US and NATO military contingent has already been deployed for over 15 years and where the Afghan Air Force faces persistent shortages of fully functioning aircraft and skilled pilots?

TEHRAN (FNA)- Deputy Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Major General Mostafa Izadi announced that the country is in possession of evidence and documents proving Washington's direct support for the ISIL terrorist group."We are facing a proxy warfare in the region as a new trick by the arrogant powers against the Islamic Republic," Izadi said on Sunday. "As the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution (Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei) said, we possess documents and information showing the direct supports by the US imperialism for this highly disgusting stream (the ISIL) in the region which has destroyed the Islamic countries and created a wave of massacres and clashes," he added. In relevant remarks on Friday, Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani condemned the Wednesday terrorist attacks in Tehran, and said that Washington is behind most of the terrorist acts in the world. "The United States has aligned itself with the ISIL in the region," Larijani said on Friday, addressing a funeral ceremony held for the victims of ISIL's Wednesday terrorist attacks on the Iranian parliament and the holy shrine of late Imam Khomeini in Tehran. He reiterated that Washington has demonstrated that it is the international ISIL. Three male assailants fired several rounds at the guards protecting the parliament building in Tehran on Wednesday morning. The assailants opened their way into the parliament's administrative building while shooting at the guards. A similar attack took place at the holy shrine of the late founder of the Islamic Republic, Imam Khomeini, parallel with the parliament attack. 17 people, including the parliament's guards, were killed and 52 others were wounded in the twin attacks. The ISIL claimed the responsibility for both attacks.

Military analysts and political commentators have deluged their readers over the past week with their views about the U.S. missile strike on Syria ordered by President Donald Trump. Some of the assessments were more useful than others, but what was surprising was that the authors mostly seemed surprised. They shouldn’t have been. The firing of cruise missiles into Middle Eastern countries with which the United States is not at war is old news. Some articles, including one in The Washington Post, used the word “unprecedented” about the strike, but the only unprecedented part was the identity of the ruler whose facilities were targeted. In fact, as the astute Juan Cole of the University of Michigan noted, the United States has been doing this for more than 20 years – with little if any known impact on whatever conflict provoked the missile strike or whatever ruler was in disfavor with Washington at the time.

In October 1993, during the Battle of Mogadishu (the Black Hawk Down incident), 18 US soldiers were killed and 73 wounded, with a pair of Black Hawk helicopters shot down. The US responded by ceasing military operations, and within a few months had withdrawn all troops from Somalia. Today, they are headed back. The new deployment, which US African Command (AFRICOM) is presented as a simple training operation, will be the first time US ground troops are officially deployed to Somalia, though of course the US has had some special forces present on the ground on and off, conducting occasional operations and spotting for US airstrikes. AFRICOM also insists the new deployment was at the request of the Somali government, though indications in recent weeks has indicated that military officials have been pushing for an escalation of US intervention in the country at any rate, aimed at fighting al-Shabaab.

When commanders want to push for fighting in Somalia, al-Shabaab is presented as either ISIS or al-Qaeda affiliated, though in practice the group is largely an independent Islamist operation with a similar ideology. The group’s operations are confined almost exclusively to Somalia, though they have launched some strikes into neighboring countries, as retaliation for those countries (particularly Kenya) being involved in interventions against them. A lot has changed in Somalia in the 24 years between direct US interventions, with the country undergoing a long period of comparatively stable anarchy followed by a protracted war designed to prop up a self-proclaimed government. It was this war, and African Union interventions to try to claim territory for this government, that largely fueled the creation of al-Shabaab.

As the U.S. prepares to send more troops to Afghanistan to combat ISIS and the Taliban, and the specter of a war hangs over every tweet the President writes about North Korea, it’s important to remember that the U.S. has been fighting in and bombing several countries in the Middle East and Asia for 16 years. According to a new study, all that war has cost the U.S. taxpayers $5.6 trillion, which is over three times what the Pentagon estimates.

The post-9/11 wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere have been fought with borrowed money, enough to require up to $8 trillion in interest payments in coming decades, a new report says. Unlike America’s previous wars, its 21st-century conflicts have been paired not with a tax hike or massive sale of U.S. bonds, but a tax cut. The federal government has been operating at a deficit since 2002, accruing a national debt that now totals $20 trillion and counting. “We have to recognize that we have been borrowing for 16 years to pay for military operations,” said Sen. Jack Reed, the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. It’s the “first time really in history with any major conflict that we have borrowed rather than ask people to contribute to the national defense directly, and the result is we’ve got this huge fiscal drag…that we’re not really accounting for or factoring into deliberations about fiscal policy as well as military policy.” The 2017 report from Brown University’s Costs of War Project arrives as U.S. lawmakers and President Donald Trump strive to enact tax changes that will add at least $1.5 trillion to the national debt.